Because Embargoes Work So Well...

by Cliopatria

North Korea's nuclear program could be stopped tomorrow by the country that provides roughly half of North Korea's energy and one-third of its food supplies - and that is China.
All China has to say to Kim Jong Il is:"You will shut down your nuclear weapons program and put all your reactors under international inspection, or we will turn off your lights, cut off your heat and put your whole country on a diet. Have we made ourselves clear?" One thing we know about China - it knows how to play hardball when it wants to, and if China played hardball that way with North Korea, the proliferation threat from Pyongyang would be over.

You're sure about that? I'm not. Don't get me wrong: I agree with him that China could be doing more (though I'm hard-pressed to think of a recent example of Chinese"hardball" that didn't involve either their own people or Taiwan [which they also think is their own people]).

China has its own worries -- which include the US, by the way, so why would they risk disorder on their border to make our lives easier? Mao famously called US atomic weapons a"paper tiger" incapable of inflicting enough damage on China's territory or population to be a serious threat: disorder is much more of a concern to China's leaders than mere WMD proliferation. If we're going to get them on our side, we need to recognize that and work with it, or get serious and work around it.

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Lisa Casanova - 5/12/2005

Mr. Kotsko beat me to it. You can bet that in an embargo against a Communist country (or any other, for that matter) it's not the government leadership who end up scrounging for enough food to live. I doubt the North Korean government will suddenly overflow with compassion for its citizens and take action to end an embargo, when from what I understand it does perfectly well starving its own people to death.

Jonathan Dresner - 5/12/2005

Our more military-savvy compatriots will have to weigh in on the question, but my understanding is that our South Korea-based forces are not intended to be the bulk of a repulsion force in the event of a North Korean attack, but are more of a hard-core border patrol, with the additional responsibility of maintaining the facilities that will come into play when tens of thousands of Okinawa-based marines, air carrier groups and other Japan-based forces are mobilized in response to Northern aggression.

They've been denigrated as a "speed bump" in the face of the vast numbers of North Korean forces and artillery, but I've never thought that was fair: in technological and training terms, US forces are far more powerful and likely to be far more effective than North Korean forces. Though they may not be able to prevent the obliteration or occupation of Seoul in the short term, they are undoubtedly a significant part of the reason the North hasn't tried to repeat its earlier attempt at reunification. Well, that and the South Korean military, which is pretty much as large, better fed, and better armed than the North....

Jason Kuznicki - 5/11/2005

I was referring to the U.S. versus North Korea--or perhaps the U.S. versus North Korea and China. Having troops in South Korea seems to do little good; they are too few to be an effective fighting force against both of them, while only serving as good targets in the future.

Jonathan Dresner - 5/11/2005

True, but North Korea's nuclear weapons capacity is much more like the US arsenal in the 1950s: small, limited delivery systems (their missiles have range, but we're not really sure about their targeting, or whether nuclear warhead delivery is on the table). Sure, a few strikes on China's major cities would be damaging, but North Korea's not likely to be able to deliver on that for a while yet.

I'm honestly not sure what you're saying about South Korea, by the way: are you talking about us v. NK or us v. China? or China v. NK?

Jason Kuznicki - 5/11/2005

The days when atomic weapons could not do substantial damage to China are long gone. Mao made that claim back when China was far more rural than it is today, and while I would hardly endorse the use of nuclear weapons in any situaiton, still, the threat is certainly a lot more real now than ever before. Real enough, I might suggest, that even keeping troops in South Korea seems rather ineffectual beside it.

Adam Kotsko - 5/11/2005

I can see being skeptical about the effectiveness of an embargo against a very small communist country located very close to a major power.